


Humanoid, and the Crowd Goes Wild

by leslielol



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s01e07 Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 13:36:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12654597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: “Captain Lorca cleared me,” Paul prefaces when he emerges from the Captain’s quarters. He hardly looks at Hugh when he says it, as if to telegraph,You were obviously listening, you should know.[Hugh and Paul try to talk about recent events. They seem instead to talk about everything else.]





	Humanoid, and the Crowd Goes Wild

**Author's Note:**

> Oop I adore this show.
> 
> I had to get this little ditty out of my system, largely to have something _completed_ while I'm working through a massive WIP, the latest chapter of which is, embarrassingly, over a month late.

Paul explains everything for Captain Lorca one last time, and Hugh counts the minutes as he stands outside his office, waiting and eavesdropping. Paul doesn't breathe a word into how frightening the ordeal was, but that’s what Hugh reads into his unusually slow and careful speaking. Paul, who rarely makes an effort to hide his disdain for others--much less his frustration with any given situation--is working very hard not to give himself away. 

“Captain Lorca cleared me,” Paul prefaces when he emerges from the Captain’s quarters. He hardly looks at Hugh when he says it, as if to telegraph, _You were listening, you should know._

“Captain Lorca cleared himself of PTSD and severe retinal degeneration. Forgive me if I don't trust him to have a medical opinion more advanced than that of a Cardassian vole.”

Hugh’s voice is sharper than intended, and louder than is wise. The ship is still fully staffed despite the curious incident, and theirs is a Captain finely tuned to criticism. If he didn’t hear Hugh’s commentary himself through the narrow close of the automated doors to his study, the sentiment will travel back to him in no time at all. 

There’s a kind of irony there that Hugh can’t appreciate just now, though Paul gives him a weak little smile, suggesting their concerns are shared. 

(Even before he knew her enough to care about her situation, Paul was quick to condemn Captain Lorca’s decision to will Michael Burnham’s presence--her _service_ \--on Discovery. She had no rank, and given her status as a mutineer, no recourse should she be mistreated in this, a life divergent from her life’s sentence. He first mounted that line as a part of some principled stance, and while he believes it even now, his arguments are saturated with pity. Hugh never joins in Paul’s private rants, reasoning only: _Michael is smart, and not only for being educated on Vulcan. She knows her situation. The best you can do it help her make it bearable._

The morning after saying so, Hugh overheard Paul inform Michael she was permitted to play music at her station while coding, if she so desired, and offered to show her how.

She responded in turn, asking why he had her completing complicated code if he didn’t think she could operate a program designed for children to use. 

He’d gotten huffy, throwing out some non-existence error she’d made and suggesting that her capacity towards the former was still up for debate. 

It was a reminder that the changes--the lure of the spore navigation and the brightness it imbued in his mind--came and went, and some days Paul was more like himself than not. 

Today is not one of those days. 

The smile on his face is soft, almost imperceptible, save for the fact that it smooths his brow and banishes the usual sternness from his upper lip. Hugh regards it uneasily; the Paul he knows, the Paul he loves, does not bleed freely with joy. He delights in the intricacies and folly of his work, and he nurtures love for both the universe at large and the man he most wants at his side within it, but he doesn’t do _this._ He does not smile with relief, because for as much as he objects to the title, he is one grim little soldier.

Hugh swallows, and succeeds in choking down all the questions he needs answered-- _Are you okay? What really happened? Why didn’t you come to me?_ \--and instead finds one he thinks Paul can answer honestly on his first try.

“Almost thirty hours, you said?”

“Twenty-eight and change. You’re a man of medicine, have a little respect for the math.”

Hugh lets slip a grin too-small for his wide mouth. 

“‘And change,’” he echoes pointedly. 

“I’m… exhausted.” The excuse isn’t much, and Hugh expects more to come except for the hand that grips his bicep, and Paul turning into his crowding walk rather than away from it.

Paul asks, “Can we sit?” 

They’re in a hallway, one of hundreds like it, bright light and a structural bent that always makes Hugh imagine what creature--all spine, no head--could be its sentient twin. Despite the scene such behavior would cause, Hugh doesn’t put Paul above slouching to the ground then and there, damn whatever any passersby would think. 

“I should get you to med bay,” Hugh tells him, and takes Paul by the other arm, thinking the man must be weak and perhaps worse off than the loopy little smile foretold. _“Right now.”_

“No, I’m…” Paul’s tired eyes glance left, slow enough for Hugh to walk back from his panic and follow Paul to wherever he’s going next. It’s been their thing for some time now. 

It’s the mess hall, mostly empty save for a few quiet sorts starting their night shifts with a breakfast and little clue as to the mayhem that has colored the minds of so many on the bridge. The tabletops are glossy white and chrome, and the place looks almost as clinical as Hugh’s own work station, and the white light somehow feels more inviting now that Hugh has come to fear Black Alert, if not for the danger they are most assuredly jumping across the universe to deposit themselves into, then for the man whose consciousness is taken on that wild ride. 

“...Kind of hungry. Can we sit?”

\- 

Hugh accepts the green tea Paul orders for him. It's not what he wants, much less needs, but it's there. 

It's _all there,_ he thinks, still bitterly, even though he understands now it’s Paul’s changes that allowed them to survive at all. 

Maybe that’s what he's smiling about. 

It's quite a thing, to go from being shamed and ostensibly blamed for the loss of life on Corvan II only weeks ago, to now having saved the 134 souls aboard his own vessel, and doing so by his own wits and determination. 

Once people understood it fully, it would be quite the accomplishment. 

_No,_ Hugh thinks, that doesn’t answer for the joy. That’s more a thing of… grim satisfaction. 

He watches Paul eat, counting every measured bite. He eats like he used to--prim and proper, a succession of tallied efforts, like he really has to put his mind to it. There’s no real pleasure, but then--this is replicated Starfleet fare, and hardly the conversationalist his mushrooms have proven themselves to be. Hugh can accept a lackluster response when the subject matter isn’t his homecooking back on earth. 

“Earlier this morning. Your little outburst after we showered…”

Paul nods as he continues to chew his sandwich. It’s bursting with sprouts and crisp lettuce leaves, exhibiting a new taste he’s developed for roughage that Hugh knows better to bring up. Another residual effect of the spore linkage, he’s sure, but Paul is the scientist between them, as he’s often reminded. 

_Medicine is a science,_ Hugh used to tut, until he got a little uneasy with Paul’s reply. 

_A science still leagues behind what I’ve done._

He never sounds as though he regrets his choice, especially when successfully navigating a complicated jump leaves him so delirious with exhilaration that it’s never too long before that giddiness begets a horny turn. Then, he’ll say all kinds of things, muttering equations into Hugh’s mouth, bursting into fits of giggles when Hugh is painfully deep inside him, and though they’ll spent considerable energy, Paul summons still more. Sometimes he disappears at once to further his research, other times--the better times--Hugh has him long enough to realize the lazy hours Paul spends drawing with a hand laid loosely on Hugh’s flesh were hours Paul spends plotting the alien star systems he’s seen. 

Though, perhaps now, the sentiment carries some gravity. 

At least, that’s what Hugh thinks when Paul turns towards him after, silently begging to be held.

“Must have been Mudd doing a dry run of his plan,” Paul supposes of their morning, and Hugh figures he’s certainly had the time to consider all the facts and arrive at the correct conclusion. “I thought I was going crazy.”

“You told me,” Hugh says, and he can’t keep the shame from tearing holes in his voice. He remembers that much, if nothing else. “I didn’t believe you.” 

Paul shrugs; almost no one did. He’d gone to Hugh first as dictated by instinct, then tried solving things on his own before turning to the Captain upon realizing he’d need some grip on authority to satisfy a happy end. He’d tried every available venue until he found the first spark of traction with Michael Burnham. 

“In fact,” Hugh continues, “I accused you of putting on an act so you wouldn’t have to go to the party.” 

Paul wipes his thumb across the corner of his mouth, catching a dribble of tasteless juice from a cucumber slice.

“To be fair, that was 100% my plan before all of… this.” 

“Why’s that?” Hugh is happy to talk about menial things, grounded things, because sometimes he thinks since putting the bionic implants into Paul’s arms, he’s foregone that opportunity. “You don’t want to smoke all these Cadets on the dancefloor with me?” 

His smile goes unmet. 

It’s the first time he hasn’t seen Paul smile for him, and despite that having once been the man’s norm, it alarms him. 

“Paul?”

“I don’t know what I want.”

The joy--whether it’s the result of over-stimulation or just plain false--is the farthest thing from Hugh’s view of his partner, who should only be the distance of a small table, but who looks like he’s gone light years into space and decades deep inside himself. 

_“Paul.”_

Hugh’s voice seizes Paul well before his hand does. Paul blinks, discards his half-eaten sandwich, and sighs. 

“I mean--” And suddenly his hands are flailing, trying both to summon the words he means to say, or telegraph them to Hugh in that voiceless language they share. “I know how I get, sometimes. Now. With the addition of,” he glances at his forearms, nevermind that the dark blue of his uniform hides their latest addition. 

“It doesn’t escape me, you know. The way you look at me, like I’ve gone verifiably insane.” Hugh opens his mouth to speak to this, but Paul runs rampant over the kind gesture. “Please, I’m not offended. You’re not wrong.”

Hugh closes his mouth, purses his lips. His expression is one like pity, though Paul understands Hugh does not telegraph those things to him, but instead, Hugh harbors those feelings for himself. 

“I was wishing you’d tell me otherwise.” 

And Paul wants that, too. At least, he wants to ease Hugh’s concerns. He wants the other man to feel just as free and untethered to their reality as he does, and forget that this discovery comes at a time of war, and is cause for a great and abiding envy across galaxies. Paul thinks he’d never get out of bed if the vision ahead of all those mortal fears wasn’t so _fucking beautiful._

And Hugh hasn’t seen it, and yet he still hovers nearby as Paul subjects himself to what accounts for the lowliest of eugenics experiments ( _I mean, I’m not over here fine-tuning strength or looks. I’m trying to converge with fungi. That should count for something, right?_ ), he is quick with his trusty tricorder, and follows at Paul’s heels as he dances towards yet another neural tailspin. 

And the next and the next. 

“Some part of me is changed by what I’ve seen,” Paul admits. “By what I know of the universe, now. How life and energy conduct themselves--it’s at once a vice grip and the sweetest touch...” He trails off, but quickly remembers himself, shooting Hugh a look as if to say, _I’m doing it now, I know._

Hugh just nods. 

He wants to understand. 

It’s been so difficult to trust what he sees of Paul with his own eyes that he hopes an explanation from the man’s own mouth will do the trick.

“It’s… the strangest vein of terror I’ve ever known and I feel _starved_ for it, sometimes. So, yes. I don’t know what I’d want to do with you, on a dancefloor, synthetic alcohol in my system, and you in that… _one shirt_ with the--” Paul gestures at Hugh’s throat, imagining the desired henley in place, the two buttons at the throat lost to the annuls of time (though, Paul was half-certain he’d bitten one off). 

He sighs, pure distress. 

Then his gaze hardens into something dangerous in its intensity, but no more certain that it was as Paul put words to his internal upset, to the complications he’s invited into himself and is only just beginning to understand. 

He repeats, his voice a low and steady rumble, _“I don’t know what I’d want to do.”_

There are eyes and ears of every creed in the universe in Starfleet, and a small selection still in the mess hall aboard the Discovery. Neither man wishes them deaf or blind, but both assume it of them in order to continue their conversation. 

“That could be the sexiest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Hugh says, the words gripping his throat on tenterhooks in an attempt to get out. “But you look like you’re about to cry.”

He hears his own words for little more than a whisper, and wants that of himself, too. 

He wants to showcase that he every bit as frightened and exhausted as he ought to be.

Paul swallows hard and though his gaze has fallen to his discarded meal, Hugh can tell he’s still deeply focused on the matter stood between them. His eyes narrow into blue flecks under colorless lashes, and Paul thinks back to their first meeting, where Paul was brash and rude and Hugh was quickly taken with the directness, but still more eager to disrupt the man’s winning streak. 

Anyone who told others to shut up with such authority had likely gotten their way a time or two. 

Hugh had decided then and there to knock Paul around a few times, and teach him otherwise. The verbal combat turned to a challenge-- _My coffee’s gone cold. I think you owe me dinner._ \--and quickly won him a magnificent _blush_ across that starkly-assembled face. Those angles and planes, drawn first in such uninterrupted and fastidious coloring blossomed with red. It touched his cheeks and ears and he looked so _angry_ for it. 

Only his eyes seemed to zig where his sense of shame had zagged, so Hugh was audience to those bright blue eyes, ever-shining with intellect, softening under a spell of curious delight. 

Then he’d smiled--his first, _real_ smile--for Hugh, and the then-med student was left wondering for the briefest second if Paul was only part human, or something else entirely. 

_Humanoid,_ which seemed a likelier concept for him now, years after finding one another and--Hugh had hoped--learning all there was to know about the other.

The conclusion he’d drawn at the time was, _This beautiful jerk is not what I thought._

The thought finds him again, but it doesn’t thrill him as it once did. 

And Paul, for all his visions of the great, wide universe, cannot see Hugh’s doubt in him. 

Hugh is thankful for this one, this singular oversight. 

He wills every uncertainty down into the pit of his stomach so that it screams and roils in the acids there. Hugh wears patience on his face and listens for Paul to try and get at the things he needs to say, rather than those he means.

“I feel like I’ve changed and I don’t know all of myself anymore.” Paul swallows hard and continues sharply, “And don’t tell me I haven’t, I’ve just spent thirty hours stranded outside the time stream, watching the rest of you carry on as normal. And,” Paul drops his voice and leans conspiratorially across the table to share with Hugh a dire secret: “I don’t know if this is normal for time travel, but I haven’t _urinated_ since--” 

“Twenty-eight,” Hugh interrupts, and it hurts to smile but he has to try. “And change.” 

Paul stares at him, expression frighteningly blank, before his face falls, and his raise jumps from the table, and _he is actually crying._

It’s little more than a wet suck of air and one choked sob tucked into the steady breath he demands of himself, his stature, his rank. He sort of whines, coming off the outburst. It would have broken Hugh’s heart if it didn’t call out for it, first. 

Hugh is out of his chair and kneeling beside Paul in an instant. His hands leap to cradle Paul’s face, but Paul pulls away, and grabs at Hugh’s arm blindly, urging him to get up, _get up._

“Always have to make a scene, don’t you, Hugh?” 

His voice is frayed, the ends raw as he tries to close on a laugh. 

Hugh is slow to want to return to his seat across from Paul, but does as he’s asked with the tacit agreement that Paul will allow him this: prolonged interaction, bare and simple in the form of Hugh’s hand over Paul’s. The palm and fingers are wet from drying his face, but Paul blinks his bright blue eyes back into clarity, and from there gives a slight squeeze--something for Hugh to hang onto.

They ground one another in this way--a laughable thing to think they can accomplish in the farthest reaches of space, but Paul doesn’t draw his hand away, regardless. 

Minutes pass. Slowly, Hugh thinks, but at least they’re not repeating themselves.

He reaches out with his free hand and secures his grip around Paul’s forearm. 

This needs grounding, too. 

He can feel the implants, smooth and strange, under the fabric of his uniform. They run warmer than the rest of Paul, and their blue sheen catches Hugh’s eyes and confuses him, even though he’s the one Paul talked into putting them into place. 

_It’s this,_ he’d said, a sleek plate in each hand, _Or the puncture holes in my sides._

At the time, Hugh had believed the needle marks to be worse outcome. At their height, there were no less than a dozen on each side, permanently red, the skin tender and too-soft from both the abuse and the treatment. No matter how often he healed them, they horrified Hugh with their ready reemergence. 

It was Paul’s willingness to accept the pain and the trauma that made the decision for him. Hugh felt answerable for what was first an act to advance the cause of knowledge. Then Paul tripped into space on mushroom spores for the high, and now it seemed his good doctor had watched idly as an addiction sank its claws in, the delight digging deeper than any needle. 

“Hey,” Hugh says, his voice soft and sweet, and very much an attempt to placate both their nerves. “You’re okay. And you’re not crazy. Well, no crazier than you already were.” 

Paul huffs a startled laugh, but a look of tacit acknowledgement pulls at his eyebrows, tugs just one corner of his mouth upwards towards satisfaction. 

Then, at the risk of chasing that smile away, Hugh admits, “I know you’re not as you used to be. I don’t love you any less.” 

He feels Paul’s hand shrink under his own.

“Forgive my… apparent hubris. But that hadn’t crossed my mind.”

“It doesn’t do me any good, wishing you hadn’t done this.” 

Hugh doesn’t let the hurt expertly hidden from Paul’s voice quiet him; he forges ahead with his own determinations. Paul’s isn’t a decision he’s made for himself; he’s shared himself with Hugh. Requisite medical tests aside, Hugh doesn’t know what he doesn’t know he’s dealing with, and only Paul can remedy that.

“I’ve only ever asked that you let me know what’s happening with you. That includes--”

“Stationary existence in the midst of one man’s vengeful time travel plot, I know, I know. But you never specified--”

Rallied by Paul’s petty, argumentative side, Hugh decides to go for broke. He sits up and leans over the table, his efforts first succeeding in toppling his cup of tea onto Paul’s plated meal. Neither pay much mind, because the outcome is this: a furtive, ready kiss nurtured by Hugh’s own hand tipping--just so--Paul’s face towards his own. It’s only by the grazing touch of his fingers that Paul sinks into becoming what Hugh knows him as best: his very own. 

Here, Paul is not trembling with stolen adrenaline, or buzzing with anger or pride--either a frequent quest. Here, Paul is still. His mind quiets, and his curiosities end at the tip of his partner’s tongue. 

Hugh returns to his seat. His stark white uniform has remained so, despite the little mess on their table. 

“Open dialogue,” he says, and Paul smirks for the joke that’s already been made. “That’s what we’ve always had. Don’t forget that.” 

Paul is helplessly red all over, and his eyes are brighter than Hugh’s seen them outside of the spore drive’s tidy chamber. 

Hugh reaches over to an adjacent table to retrieve a handful of napkins to sop up his mess. 

“Sorry about your sandwich,” he says, not sounding sorry in the least.

Paul is about to tell him as much when an announcement reaches the sections of the ship scanning positive for activity. The evening’s festivities have resumed, words spoken clearly as if the music bleeding into the message’s background isn’t clue enough. It’s late, but the chaos is over, and people are determined to have a good time.

Hugh smiles for that fact alone. 

“This is the first party in eight months,” he realizes. The first time the whole of the ship seemed to have let free its collective breath. 

“There was that,” Paul waves a hand, the memory escaping him, “Commendation ceremony.”

 _For the dead,_ Hugh wants to interject, but that fact doesn’t need reminding. 

“The first party,” Hugh stipulates instead. “Not the first time we all got gussied up in our Starfleet best.” 

“I should have wanted to go,” Paul says, which is always his apology. So rarely does he apologize for what he does or doesn’t do, but how he behaves about it before he inevitably succumbs to whatever it is Hugh asks of him.

He does this, Hugh realizes, because even that morning, after the wide-eyed and crazed line of questioning-- _You just said that, Hugh, Hugh you just asked me about your breath, I said it was bad, and weren’t you dressed just a second ago?_ \--Paul had calmed himself down enough to promise not to jump that day, and that he’d be ready for the party by the time Hugh’s med bay shift ended. 

“It’s fine,” he says, meaning it. “And maybe--it still feels strange. In times like these.”

For as advanced a society humankind has become, for all it has learned interacting with others, it still retains endless platitudes for war.

“I mean--what do you even call what Mudd did? Subterfuge? Terrorism?” Hugh’s face darkens as he wonders if horrors are true, even if they are not lasting. 

“Genocide?” 

Paul shakes his head, either because he does not know or does not wish to answer. He asks instead a simple, quiet, “Does this frighten you?” 

“The war frightens me,” Hugh confirms. “I figured I’d see its victims, I’d tend to the living and tally the dead, but I never thought you’d be at its heart.” 

“The war will end,” Paul says, and he’s so assured that Hugh feels a wave of nausea hit him, like he’s sustained whiplash from Paul’s unabashed about-face. He’d spent six months uprooting his work, losing his longest friend and closest colleague in Staal--first to another ship, and then to darkest, coldest space--all the while growing angrier and cooler towards everyone around him--Hugh, included. And in those awful months spent in near-total uncertainty, wherein his research was blunted and steered and abused for the purposes of warfare, Paul had lost his sense of certitude. The icy confidence with which he rendered conclusions well before the whole of their actions had taken place was gone, and replaced instead with a pitless anger that reached far and wide. 

The scuttlebutt was, Lieutenant Stamets was a coward. Or a staunch conscientious objector.

The terminology ebbed and flowed with the rising death toll. 

In fact, it was a matter of petty showmanship from the man running the show and an unwitting player.

It was but one offhand word from the Captain’s mouth, but Staal had just been sent away and Paul was distressed. His color commentary to the Captain’s face had earned him the threat of losing Hugh to a transfer, too. 

For the crying frustration _that_ had resulted in--and eventual furious submission--Hugh had feared Paul would never grow to accept their new circumstances. He worried about being sent away as Paul’s punishment, and worried all the more that Paul would sooner abandon his life’s work than see that happen. 

Things are better now, Hugh thinks. The Captain never leveled such a threat again, and Paul lost himself to his work, as was wanted of him. 

_Post-crisis crisis averted,_ given the war was only getting started.

The implants are a part of that. Michael Burnham, too. Her strength and intellect are their own merits, but Hugh always thought Discovery needed someone besides a _Captain_ who acted as though they had nothing to lose. With her, they quickly gained a leg up on the Klingon front with the spore breakthrough, and a strange equilibrium had found them soon after. 

It feels far from over, however, and Paul’s promise that an end will come is unnerving. 

Hugh wonders where all that confidence comes from, and for a moment, he’s too afraid to ask. 

“Did you… can you see it?”

It’s a whisper, but Paul does him the favor of not answering in kind. 

“No,” Paul says at once, fast, because he’s looked. “But there’s so much. And for as terribly as that scared me at first… I’m so relieved. The Klingons aren’t hiding around every corner. And theirs is a fight that can’t sustain itself, because we don’t hunger for endless conflict. We have in ourselves a greater drive to end it, and get back what we’ve already come so far for.” He blinks, tiredly now. “And if we don’t, if we are among the casualties… It won’t be the end.”

To his surprise, Hugh hears Paul’s peace with that estimation. 

“Sounds like you found God out there.” 

Paul shakes his head at the old joke. “No. Just… endless possibilities.” 

Hugh wishes he still had the tea to settle his stomach. Something like fear is twisting up inside, and though his tricorder is at his hip, he does not made an examination. He’s certain it’s all in his head.

“You make it sound so beautiful.”

“It is.”

Paul stands, and Hugh wonders if he means to go to his lab now, just to be near the very idea of another jump. 

But Paul doesn’t move except to smooth his uniform.

Hugh remains seated, thinking this is a better venue from which to observe his partner. It affords a kind of perspective he supposes Paul has earned. Revenance for his dedication to the exploratory endeavor, and the lengths he goes to maintain it. 

Closing those blue eyes, sinking off into blackest space, and giving of his human self to make way for something else, something unknown but unabashedly divine. 

“You disappear, when you’re hooked into those systems. I always watch the feed when I can’t be down there with you. I’m afraid you’ll just… _go_ into everything you’re seeing. If I blink, you’ll be gone.”

“You think I’d leave without saying goodbye?” Paul reaches out his hand for Hugh to take, as if it’s the doctor who has spent a cumulative day-and-a-half outwitting certain death, and he is understandably tired. “What am I saying--you think I wouldn’t take you with me?” 

Hugh smirks and accepts Paul’s hand. 

“Take me to bed, we’ll call it even.”

-

Music--and conversations loud enough to be heard over it--pulse from Recreational Room D702. Hugh and Paul briefly part ways to avoid a couple romancing in the center of the corridor, their limbs reaching high and low rather than left to right to bar their passing. 

They meet up again on the other side, with Paul bumping his hip against Hugh’s.

“We could make an appearance,” he offers, even as they pass the room. The music follows them and the invitation feels sincere.

“You’re sweet,” Hugh says, and brings an arm to curl around Paul’s waist. “And possibly dehydrated and delusional.”

“The three d’s.” Paul slumps some now that he’s been given the support to do so and _not_ drop immediately to the floor. “Because I am… also… _down to fuck.”_

Hugh laughs and squeezes the waist he’d take hold of, later, if Paul can stand as long as his offer.

“I was thinking more along the lines of, you drink a gallon of water, go to sleep, and I’ll sedate you if you put up a fight.” 

“Yeah, se _ **d** ate_ me.” 

They make it to their shared quarters without further incident. Theirs is a quiet section of the ship, filled principally with older couples, the likes of which have taken their posts in twos, aboard the same ship as though they were commuting, not hurtling through space. 

Any given starship feels overrun by young, excitable Cadets on a good day, but Hugh likes their area. He’s the youngest in the section, and always likes being seen walking to and from his quarters by his neighbors and colleagues alike. They see a young, accomplished doctor with his sights set dead ahead. They see the erratic genius at his side and wonder, was there anything Dr. Hugh Culber can’t handle?

Hugh insists Paul take a long, hot shower, and Paul acquiesces, on the condition that Hugh does the work of undressing him.

“These uniforms are no fun at all,” Paul huffs after being stripped bare in all of five seconds. Hugh can’t help but grin at his disappointment. 

“Some might commend the design for its easy access.” 

Hugh has a clear view of the shower from the bottom corner of Paul’s side of the bed--and it’s no wonder the astromycologist spends so much time there in the mornings, pretending to check his assignments’ progress on his PADD. 

Besides a clear one, it’s a nice view. Paul’s body seems almost luminous in the dim light, and he shifts neatly, like he’s engaging in some antiquated dancing under the water’s spray. 

Hugh feels unusually at ease, and realizes it’s because he’s had quite the pleasant day, save for learning that Paul had a cumulative twenty-eight additional hours of it. 

There won’t be any more excitement tonight, he decides. Paul is deservedly exhausted, and he’d made Hugh feel that way after only a conversation about why that is. So Hugh undresses himself, trading his white uniform for non-regulation blue boxer-briefs. He tidies up their rooms, his last task being to bring Paul’s uniform to the automated laundry chute. 

His eyes catch on a dark stain, but Hugh’s ready panic is for naught; the mark is only the tea he’d spilled while catching his genius unawares. He smiles, and disposes of the shirt. 

The trousers, he realizes, as his trained hands detect something unusual amidst the fabric, bear another surprise. 

Out from the right trouser pocket spill a dozen or so scribbled notes, each a variation on the same message: _I’ll fix it, I’m sorry, I love you._ For a moment, Hugh doesn’t know what he’s looking at, in large part because each message is scribbled on--

“Where did you find _paper?_ ” he calls out, overly loud, given that Paul has exited the shower and stands before him in his regulation red sleep clothes. 

Hugh looks up at him, dumbfounded. It does not settle his nerves that the same expression plays on Paul’s face, as well. 

“And what are these?”

Paul licks his lips. 

Paul looks at his hands. 

“I just thought--I should leave word. If I couldn’t convince anyone to help me, and I failed. Nothing I wrote on a PADD could withstand the transitory bearing of the time loop. Are you overly unnerved? Don’t be. Overly so.” 

Paul seems satisfied with his own answer, and joins Hugh on the bed. 

He eyes the wadded-up, smoothed-out collection spilling out of Hugh’s hand, however, and his confidence wanes.

“In hindsight, it may have been overkill.”

“The word of the day,” Hugh murmurs. He fights the urge to count the number of times Paul thought to say goodbye to him. 

It’s not the kind of love he wants to indulge in, just now. It’s too deep and reminds him of equally dangerous adventures. 

“The paper,” Paul starts, then stops, looking contrite. “All… fifty-seven pieces… I found in Lorca’s office. Along with some unauthorized weaponry which _should_ be cause for alarm, but since he’s _already_ a blatantly a war-hungry maniac, the element of surprise has long abandoned my faculties when it comes to our illustrious Captain.” 

Hugh smiles, because Paul really seems to be trying his best for that, and though he is careful of it in his own right, Hugh derives joy from _Paul deriving joy_ from bad-mouthing Captain Lorca. No small part of Paul likes to imagine the Captain has the entire ship bugged, that he’s hearing every word just as it’s spoken, except he lacks the means to render punishment without unearthing his illegal methods. 

Hugh draws back the sheets, and ushers Paul in alongside him. Like he expected, Paul is suddenly sluggish with the promise of sleep being so close. He closes his eyes before his head hits the pillow. When he curls up to Hugh and fits himself under the man’s arm, he does so by touch alone. 

“He listened to Michael,” Hugh says. He doesn’t know what drives him to do so, save for the idyllic sense that perhaps they can put this matter behind them and, come morning, awake into their normal routine. 

“Hmm. I suppose I can still be surprised.”

“And Michael listened to you.” 

“Let’s not use transitive principles to boost my ego, my dear.” 

“Really? That’s where you draw the line?” 

Paul peeked an eye open. “I mean, not when there are surer means than that to boost my ego…” 

“If I so much as boost your heart rate right now, I may be in violation of my oath to do no harm.” 

Paul tries--and fails--to look suitably annoyed. He closes his eyes again, like this should win him the argument.

 _I’m a hero,_ he all but sniffs. _And I’m very, very tired. All that hero-ing, you know._

Except, Paul says nothing of the sort, and the haughty lines at his hairline smooth into something so unlike him, that again, Hugh slides towards uneasiness as the automated lights begin to dim. 

“Hold me,” Paul asks into the blackness.

Hugh shuts his eyes tight and does so, hoping Paul isn’t off seeing things again, and this request is his alone to fulfill. 

“Keep me.”

It’s near-indiscernible, Paul’s whisper. He so rarely gets any practice at it. 

Still, Hugh is riveted.

Paul says, “Right here, all night.” 

He says, “Don’t let me go anywhere.” 

The darkness filling their quarters isn’t like that of space. Anything here, they know. There’s no mysteries behind the various PADDs and research materials. The small terrarium for Paul’s personal mushrooms-- _I talk to these, just not about work_ \--holds no dire consequences. Its contents are simple: great plumes rest atop naked white stalks. Their flesh is exquisitely delicate, a fact known well beyond the means of touch. These little things can travel the whole of the universe, charting paths unknown and previously impossible, but will wilt and bruise at a moment’s notice. 

Hugh can sense that’s what Paul finds so appealing in his mushrooms--defied expectations. 

Hugh wraps his body around Paul’s, knowing that whether he bruises the man or not, his contact is desired. He explores what’s his to explore, feeling the flesh, soft where it’s soft, hard where it’s not. He reaches the smooth addition of the bionics, and his mind drifts towards the altered DNA now thriving in Paul’s body, adapting to what is there, and changing what it lacks for survival. 

Even for knowing better, Hugh kisses Paul’s shoulder and thinks-- 

_Perfectly human._


End file.
